1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems for maintaining the security of data in a computer-based environment and in particular, to methods and systems for maintaining the security of data as it is input from an input device such as a mouse or keyboard and as it is output through, for example, audio or video means.
2. Background Information
The concept of security continues to become increasingly more important in a world where personal computer systems are generally connected via wireless or wired networks and/or internetworks, such as the Internet, to other computing systems. Many companies and institutions have addressed security issues as they relate to, for example, the transfer of data from a personal (client) computer system to server computer systems over network communications. For example, firewalls are typically present on local area networks (LANs) to form boundaries between the rest of the internetworking world and the computer systems on the LAN. In addition, widely used cryptography techniques are often applied to such data transfers to ensure the security of the data communication paths.
However, there still remains a problem on the client computer systems themselves regarding valuable data that is often stored in valid form on the client computer system even though it may be transmitted in encrypted form over a communications channel to a server machine. For example, a user desiring to buy an object over the Internet, may connect and log into a website and provide his/her credit card information in order to purchase the object. Although the website (and client browser on the client machine) may support the transfer of the credit card information using a secure communications layer (such as SSL—secure socket layer protocol), the credit card information, in order to be displayed on the display device of the client computer system actually resides in storage as valid data for some period of time. Unauthorized “hackers” can then access such stored data (providing they are not kept out by a firewall or have been installed as rogue applications on the client computer system) using sophisticated mechanisms, even if the data is stored briefly. Thus, there is an ever-increasing need for providing techniques for securing data on a client machine.